Porfirio Lopez waters one of the dozens of hanging flower planters that now dot Providence’s Downtown Improvement District. Corporate sponsors have paid for the planters and their upkeep.

The Providence Journal / Andrew Dickerman

PROVIDENCE — Downtown is awash in color, the drab walls of industrial gray broken by dozens of enormous hanging baskets full of Margarita sweet potato vines, fuchsia Supertunias and Royal Velvet Supertunias.

Everywhere you look, the city seems to be blooming. Steel planters designed and manufactured by the Steel Yard, a local artists’ organization, line streets like Westminster and Weybosset. The median strip on Memorial Boulevard at Pine Street has been transformed from a dusty no man’s land to a carpet of red and orange petunias.

Frank LaTorre, the director of public space for the Downtown Improvement District, is the proud father of this floral beneficence. As he leads a visitor on a tour of downtown, he can’t contain his enthusiasm.

“It’s really about building community,” he said, ticking off the various corporate sponsors who subsidize the planting program. “These flowers represent the soul of the community and the soul is coming back.”

The flowering of downtown is the brainchild of the Downtown Improvement District, a nonprofit organization supported by tax assessments on downtown property owners. The beautification project began last year and has grown by leaps and bounds this summer.

Created by landscape architects Gates, Leighton & Associates and supported by $60,000 in business sponsorships, the improvement district has installed 190 hanging baskets, placed 50 planters and, in addition to the median at Memorial Boulevard and Pine Street, planted areas at La Salle Square, Emmett Square and on Weybosset Street in front of the Providence Performing Arts Center. (The hanging baskets are so big it takes three people to lift one).

The DID, as the improvement district is called, has introduced 16 varieties of plants, from dahlias to daffodils, to a streetscape once littered with cigarettes and graffiti. For nearly four years, the district’s yellow-shirted Clean and Safe teams have been a big part of the downtown’s revival. The teams perform a host of duties, from picking up trash to giving directions to visitors.

As planters and hanging baskets have sprung up in the most unlikely of places, downtown business owners have started taking notice. Some, like the Rhode Island School of Design, have beautified their own property; others, like GTECH , the Rhode Island Foundation and Granoff Associates, have become sponsors, paying $450 to sponsor a hanging basket, $1,250 for a concrete planter and $1,850 for a steel planter. After the first year, the business sponsor pays $700 a year to maintain the plantings.

LaTorre points to the new saplings on Fulton Street and describes how they humanize the industrial landscape by providing texture and scale. He walks over to Emmett Square, the “crown jewel” in the district’s campaign to turn the blank canvas of the median strip into something lush and lively. The strip, once a playground for weeds, now sprouts lavender and hibiscus, with a tiny bird bath tucked away behind the tall grasses.

The district has concentrated on gateways to downtown, such as La Salle Square, which faces the Dunkin’ Donuts Center, and Memorial Boulevard. LaTorre is particularly proud of “the greenhouse,” a narrow stretch of land along Memorial Boulevard that faces GTECH and Providence Place.

“It was a jungle in there,” he said, nodding at the bed of flowers that surround a narrow greenhouse-like structure. “We had to pull out trees and bushes that were this big.”

Again, Latorre said the transformation of this neglected patch of land was a collaborative effort between the district and the city’s Parks Department, which has replaced half of the greenhouse’s glass windows.

Meanwhile, the response from visitors has been overwhelmingly positive, according to Phyllis Blanchette, director of visitor services for the Providence Warwick Convention and Visitors Bureau. A woman from California told her that, “This is a city that knows what it’s doing,” while a tourist from Arizona called Providence one of New England’s best-kept secrets: “It’s so beautiful, friendly and welcoming.”

The success of the local beautification effort has begun to spread. Newark, N.J., and Nashville, Tenn., recently sent the leaders of their downtown improvement districts to Providence to find out how the local district did it.

lborg@projo.com